Do not shoot at the messenger!

Against the backdrop of the widespread pressure of governments of different countries to instant messengers, Telegram posted in his Twitter a link to the article of the press secretary of the Marcus RA company on their principles and on a person’s right to private life and freedom.

At the moment, a very unhealthy trend is traced in the world - the authorities of many countries have started talking about the fact that the time has come to take control of the messengers under control, for which they are taking certain steps in the development of new laws, and negotiations with the owners of messengers in an ultimatic tone are taking place. Without quite understanding the technological features of the work of most services of instant messaging, the government requires the impossible from instant messengers and IT companies-from the provision of “encryption keys” to the introduction of backdrops in Software and the devices that will allow the special services to decipher the correspondence and monitor users. Naturally, the owners of the messengers, the Internet community and representatives of the industry could not help but respond to such a yelling attempt to advance, the secret of correspondence and the right to anonymity.

As we already wrote, a bill on deanonymization of users of instant messaging applications has recently been submitted to the State Duma, which implies their identification using a mobile phone number on the basis of an agreement between a messenger and a cellular operator. The Russian Association of Electronic Communications (RAEK) criticized the document for the authorship of deputies M.A. Mukabenova, O.A. Nicolaeva and A.A. Yushchenko.

According to the RAEC, the amendments are redundant, since such tasks can be implemented at the expense of the current legislation. Thus, user identification is now possible due to the fact that messengers operators are required to store data on formations and messages within three years, and the operators - the facts of data transfer, while contracts for communication services are concluded upon the presentation of documents certifying the identity of a citizen of the Russian Federation, the RAEC reported.

In addition, it is incorrectly determining the messenger operator, under which any sites that have the possibility of personal correspondence may fall. The conclusion of the agreements on identification with the operator of the communication may become “unbearable”, since more than 20 thousand operators operate in Russia, the message is indicated. “Internet companies and communication operators will need to conclude hundreds of thousands, if not millions of identification agreements,” the association assumes.

Also, the law does not have a mechanism for identifying a subscriber who goes into the network from public places, for example, from schools where the data of a person who is at the moment is not available.

Amendments contradict the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the RAEK report said. Operators will have to track user correspondence in order to prevent the distribution of information prohibited in the Russian Federation, and these measures do not correspond to Art. 23 of the Constitution, establishing the right to the secret of correspondence. Moreover, encryption is used in instant messengers that does not allow their operators to view sent messages.

The industry does not support the current version of the bill, and is included in the RAEK. “At the same time, there are no justifications of such serious restrictions,” the message says.

Meanwhile, Roskomnadzor, considered one of the developers of the bill, supported the initiative of deputies. The head of Roskomnadzor, Alexander Zharov, said that in this matter "the approach is important, there is no occurrence of freedom of speech." The chances of adopting the bill are high: it is agreed with the United Russia faction, it was already publicly supported by the chairman of the Information Policy Committee Leonid Levin.

Simultaneously with these events, unprecedented pressure on the Telegram messenger is now taking place, and both in our country and abroad. In early May of this year, at the Congress in London, dedicated to the fight against terrorism, the head of the Europol Briton Rob Waineite complained that the creator of Telegram's application Pavel Durov does not show much desire to cooperate with the special services in order to fall off from this application of jihadists, among which it enjoys special success.

Telegram is allegedly popular among young jihadists joining IG (terrorist organization, banned in Russia) in Syria, and it was also used by one of the most advanced British cyber terrorists. Waineite said that now militants of the extremist group of IS prohibited in Russia and many other countries develop their own social network, which will allow them to communicate and propaganda without interventions.

According to Waynrait, the creation of its own social network is a response to pressure from the special services of different countries and technological companies. However, as the head of the Europol said, if Facebook and Twitter are actively cooperating with special services, helping them prevent terrorist propaganda, then Telegram is evading such cooperation. And here the representative of the British Europol is cunning, since in January last year the messenger has alreadyblocked 660 IS public channels, which had appeared there since November 2015. Every day, the messenger deleys 5-10 ISIS public channels on complaints that users send to the address [email protected] , the creator of Telegram Pavel Durov noted.

Durov has repeatedly stated that his application should be free. “We do not like the bureaucracy, police states, large governments, wars, socialism and excessive standards,” the world media quoted Durov. “We like freedom, strong judicial systems, small governments, free markets, neutrality and civil rights.” Meanwhile, in Russian pro -government media, the campaign began against Telegram and Pavel Durov personally.

Journalists and engaged "experts" claim that without the access of Russian security forces to the messenger databases, as well as the functioning of Telegram's encryption in it, is allegedly "refuge terrorists and extremists."

Moreover, a tragedy that has recently occurred in London with the participation of a suicide bomber is used by British, Russian, and others as a reason to tighten the nuts against Telegram. The cynicism of the situation is that the mother of the Manchester suicide bomb Abedi, Tabal himself, warned the British authorities that the son was undergoing a “radicalization process”, but they did not respond to the signal of the British Libyan descent, but began to look for the extreme, and for some reason they were the Telegram messenger, and not the strange attitude of the police towards the received information.

In mid -May of this year, we reported that Roskomnadzor sent a letter to the instant messenger to register in the Ori Register, giving a thought for a thought. The agency initially did not confirm the inside posted in the messenger’s channels, but recently the head of Roskomnadzor said that the decision to block Telegram in Russia depends on the commission of the messenger administration requirements for the provision of identifiers to make information to the register of information distribution. Thus, Zharov indirectly confirmed this information.

“It depends on one factor: in response to the request of Roskomnadzor, the Telegram administration will provide those identifiers that are necessary to enter the information distribution organizers to the register,” Zharov said . He did not name the deadline for providing data, but clarified that the department is in contact with the Telegram administration.

As you can see, Telegram is currently under the tremendous pressure of governments of different countries, as well as the media, which for the most part decided to join this pressure, so the owners of the messenger could not but react to what was happening. Recently, Telegram in his official Twitter decided to recall the article by Marcus Ra, who is considered a representative of the messenger, who he wrote back in March this year.

After a recent terrorist act, government officials around the world resumed their calls for backdoors in through encrypted applications for messaging, Marcus Ra writes. At the same time, journalists make a regular bunch of mistakes in their coverage of events. “Thanks to these errors, I have many questions from surprised Telegram users. So, let's define several things, ”he notes in his article“ Donat Shoot the Messenger ”.

“First, how are Telegram data protected? Telegram secret chats use through encryption, which means that no one, including Telegram, can decipher the data that the communicating parties exchange.

To protect data not covered by through encryption, Telegram uses a distributed infrastructure. Cloud Chat data is stored in several data centers around the world, which are controlled by various legal entities located in different jurisdictions. The corresponding decryption keys are divided into parts and are never stored in the same place as the data that they protect. As a result, several court orders from various jurisdictions should force Telegram to provide these data.

Thanks to this structure, not a single government or block of single-minded countries can invade the private life and freedom of self-expression of people. Telegram can be forced to abandon the data only if the problem is serious and universal enough to undergo a test of several different legal systems around the world.

So far, Telegram has not provided third parties, including governments, not a single byte of user data.

Secondly, what about terrorists? Now let's see how terrorist organizations can use messages for messaging and, more importantly, what we can do to stop them.

Private messages. People are mostly afraid that terrorists will use encrypted applications to send secret messages to prepare and coordinate their attacks.

At first glance, it may seem seductive to simply prohibit through encryption in order to stop the exchange of messages from terrorists. The sad truth is that this will not work. The terrorists are ready to experience great discomfort to ensure the safety of their messages, and they always coped with this task, even tolerated various kinds of discomfort, including death. Therefore, if you forbid or close existing messages for messaging, they will immediately switch to one of the following tactics:

Create their own applications. The technology for creating encrypted messages for messaging is well -known. Today, everyone can make a through encrypted messenger. These new applications probably would not have too many brilliant functions, and you would have to manually install them bypassing Apple or Google Store, but they would work. There are rumors that ISIS (IG) members had its own application since January 2016.
They will use the coded language. Steganography is a bizarre word for hiding information in the usual form. You can safely use any publicly available or controlled channel, if only you and your alleged recipient know what "Uncle David is going to make purchases tomorrow."
Using other communication methods. You, as an ordinary user, do not want to buy a new phone, make one call, write one text message, and then throw the device into the basket. But this is how the Parisian terrorists acted, communicating with each other in order to organize and conduct the most deadly ISIS attacks in Europe today.

As you can see, in many cases, terrorists will not even have to switch to anything. They have quite viable alternatives to existing encrypted applications. You, on the other hand, are not doing this.

Ordinary people are not ready to face the discomfort of applications with poor usability, not to mention the use of “recording phones” or secret languages to ensure confidentiality. As a result, the only thing that state institutions may be required is to make a mass observation possible again and provide your personal data to hackers or corrupt officials.

Thirdly, public (publicly available) messages . Of course, this does not mean that we cannot challenge the planes of terrorists. Another key way in which terrorists use the services of mass communication is the spread of their ideas and informing as many people as possible about their actions.

It is for this reason that all kinds of terrorist organizations have recently turned to social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and other social media to publish their content along with some threats and statements. Telegram is unique among encrypted messengers in that it has channels - a tool for sending open public messages of an unlimited audience. Naturally, terrorists tried to use this tool for programs associated with IG. But, like other networks, Telegram took steps to drive them out of this public platform.

The channels of terrorists still come up, as in other networks, but Telegram receives messages about them almost immediately, after which they close for several hours, long before they can get at least some resonance. (I saw something? We report it now!)

Nevertheless, no matter how Treatment and others try, terrorists have a powerful ally who helps them spread their terrible message everywhere -

Love everything with dark colors (this is fourth). What terrorism makes it possible is not the use of weapons with terrorists and not an exchange of messages - they have a rich history of improvisation in both of these areas. But there is one truly indispensable stimulating element: media. And it is not surprising that terrorist organizations invest a lot of funds in the widest possible coverage of their acts in the press.

This is because when you look at the numbers, any other cause of death and destruction, overshadows terrorist acts, no matter how cruel and unfair they are.

The main task of the terrorist is to convince you that their wild deeds are more significant for you than about 150,000 deaths from other reasons that occur every day. They need to distort the perception in order to make us feel under the threat of them, and not from the inconspicuous number of other dangers that we are actually subjected to.

Unfortunately, the media willingly “help” in this terrorists. In the end, disturbing news brings the growth of pages and money from advertising, especially when the news relate to photographs of victims or the terrorist attacks themselves. Thus, terror spreads on the wings of greedy to the “clicks” of the press, incurred by those politicians who want more power and less responsibility.

Fifth , their strength is in fear. We must never forget that terrorist organizations are primarily the “Eaters” of our fear. They will try our best so that we feel insecure in our own cities and in our own houses. But there are too many of us, and there are too few of them for these attempts to turn into something more than just a drop in the sea of earthly dangers with which we learned to live and swim further.

We should not panic and become a victim of many states and governments, which also like to use our fear of terrorism [ Hello Saurus Complex! ] to achieve their selfish goals. Instead, we must give consolation and any possible support to victims and their families - especially if we have a connection with them, as if this could be unlikely. And always be on the alert. We must always remember that terrorists are fighting for our minds, in our minds. In the end, we must achieve victory. ”

Far from all the statements of the Marcus RA, we agree, but in his article there are those facts that cannot be refuted: no prohibitions and the introduction of total surveillance of all users to defeat terrorism and extremism, no hysteria has yet helped to overcome one or another danger, try to make PR as much as possible on the topics painful for the society of infinite politicians and officials will always be, officials will always be, officials. And here civil society should fight for its rights - in particular, regarding freedom of communication, access to information and personality dances.

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